by Joel Goldman
“One and the same.”
“Who’s buying?”
“He is. Jimmy told Bonner we came out to the Farm to see him on Sunday. Bonner called me yesterday afternoon. I thought he was going to chew me out, tell us to stay the hell away from his client. But he didn’t. Instead, he asked us to meet him for breakfast.”
“How’s a blue-collar guy like Jimmy Martin afford a lawyer like Ethan Bonner?”
“Beats me.”
The Classic Cup is on the Country Club Plaza, Kansas City’s Spanish-inspired signature shopping district, located in midtown. There’s enough power at its breakfast tables to light the shops at Christmas.
Bonner was waiting for us, his scuffed shoes propped on an empty chair, glasses halfway down his nose, long hair pushed behind his ears, reading the New York Times. He was wearing jeans and a corduroy blazer over a Grateful Dead T-shirt and a three-day growth of beard. He was a solo practitioner, mixing criminal defense with plaintiff’s personal injury work; winning more cases than most with strategy and tactics few had the balls to use when someone’s life was on the line.
He had the perfect Kansas City pedigree. He grew up in Mission Hills, home to old money and older mansions. He graduated from Pembroke Hill, the city’s premier private school, before going to Yale and then Harvard for law school. He worked for the law firm his grandfather had founded and his father ran for an entire week before he quit and opened his own shop, his father saying that his son didn’t just march to the beat of a different drummer; he was playing an instrument no one had ever heard before.
Bonner dropped his feet to the floor, shoving the chair away from the table, folded his newspaper in half, and waved us to our seats.
“Jack,” he said, extending his hand, “I haven’t seen you since the Janice Graham case. You remember her?”
“Sure. She and her husband were in the residential mortgage business. She was charged with stealing Social Security numbers belonging to dead people and selling them to illegal immigrants so they could get fraudulent home loans.”
“I thought I was going to lose that one, sure as hell.”
“So did I until you blew our star witness out of the stand. Been so long I can’t remember her name.”
“Kendra Wood. Wasn’t hard once I figured out she was in love with Janice’s husband. She wanted to get rid of Janice so she could run away with him. Turned out she was the one running the scam and had set Janice up.”
“We checked her out six ways to Sunday and didn’t come up with that. Janice’s husband had no idea Kendra felt that way about him. How did you tumble to it?”
“You looked in the wrong places.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You looked at Kendra from the outside, at all the stuff you could see. She worked for Janice and her husband. Always showed up on time. Always got good performance reviews. She was married with kids, went to church on Sunday, and didn’t stay out late.”
I nodded. “The kind of upright citizen with enough guts to blow the whistle.”
“That’s who you saw. I saw a woman who betrayed the people she was closest to outside of her own family. We weren’t talking about a drug addict that needed a fix or a gangbanger looking to get right with the cops before it was his turn to take the needle. Shit, upright is easy compared to betrayal. Upright takes guts, but betrayal takes loathing and guts. I wanted to know where the loathing came from, so I looked at her from the inside out.”
“How’d you do that?”
“I’m like a magician. I never give up my secrets. Kendra Wood was living a fantasy, and no one knew it because she came across so normal she’d bore you to death. Crazy how people can hide shit like that.”
“Not as crazy as Jimmy Martin killing his kids.”
Bonner leaned back in his chair. “Point taken. Except for one thing. He may not have done it.”
“May not have done it? I thought defense lawyers stuck with innocent until proven guilty.”
“Jimmy Martin is charged with two things: stealing and contempt of court. He stole to support his family, and the judge held him in contempt because he’s pissed at his wife. He hasn’t been charged with killing his kids.”
“Yet,” I said. “There’s a reason the cops are looking at him so hard.”
“You and I both know that doesn’t mean they’re right.”
A server took our orders. Three men in suits, carrying briefcases, filed past our table, one of them telling Bonner he’d see him in court after lunch. Bonner got up, followed the man to his table, wrapped his arm around him, whispered, patted him on the back, and came back to his seat.
“Just settled a case. Now I can pay for breakfast. What if Jimmy Martin didn’t kill his kids?”
“Then he should tell his wife where they are,” Lucy said.
“If it were that easy, we’d all have to find another line of work. Look, I don’t know what happened to his kids. Jimmy won’t talk about them. Not one fucking word.”
“At least he treats you the same way he treated us,” I said.
“I don’t mind. Sometimes it’s better not to know. Lets me sleep at night. This time, I’m not so sure. Best chance I’ve got to get Jimmy a deal on the theft charge is find those kids and hope they’re still alive when I do.”
“Then tell him to talk to us,” Lucy said.
“Won’t do any good. He won’t talk to me about the kids. He’s not going to talk to you. But you guys can still help me.”
“How?”
“His wife Peggy hired you. Tell her to let you work with me. We want the same thing, to get the kids back, and I need investigators Jimmy can’t afford.”
“Can he afford you?”
“Nope. Public defender is refusing to take any new cases. Their workload is so heavy they’re probably committing malpractice every time they answer the phone. The judge asked me if I’d take the case. Looked like a simple deal—work out a plea on the theft charge—and then this thing with the kids came up. Be a big help if we work together.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Lucy asked. “Peggy hates Jimmy. Why should she help him? You’re just trying to find out what we’ve got on Jimmy so you can get him off.”
“That’s what I’d think if I were sitting where you’re sitting,” Bonner said. “So, here’s my offer. I’ve hired someone to help me with this case. Anything she comes up with, you can have. The three of you can work together.”
“You can’t afford to pay investigators. How are you going to pay someone else?” I asked.
“She owes me a favor. Here she comes,” Bonner said, pointing over my shoulder.
I turned around, stood up, and started to shake.
“Hello, Jack,” Kate Scranton said. “How are you?”
Chapter Twenty-one
My body can be like a teenage girl living on the margins where everything is either the best or worst that ever happened. The ordinary ups and downs of daily existence may pass me by, water off a duck’s back, or unleash the demons. There’s little predictability to what will flip my switch except that, when it happens, it happens without warning or opportunity to steel myself. Mine is an erratic vulnerability that drives me crazy, leaving me weak when I have to be strong and causing me to lose control when I have to be in control.
I might have shaken just as much had I known Kate was going to be at breakfast. Wound tight with anticipation, I still may have spun out like a top when I saw her. But her unexpected appearance was a gut punch that never gave me a chance. We had too much unfinished business, neither knowing what came after hello.
Traces of silver had found their way into her dark hair along with creases above her brow and a softening of her cheeks, concessions to her mid-forties that gave her a settled beauty. Standing two feet away, her head cocked at a slight angle, she carried herself with the same certainty that had first drawn me to her, observing and absorbing everyone and everything, intense blue eyes instinctively probing for secrets hidden in ou
r facial expressions, body language, and the way we didn’t say what we really meant. Then and now, that was also one of our problems, the way she made me feel exposed, laying bare things I didn’t want to admit or share, no matter how open and obvious they were to her.
“Never better, Kate. Good to see you.”
She took half a step closer, palms out to catch me. I gripped the table with one hand, held her off with the other, not wanting to fall into her arms. Lucy quietly angled my chair away from the table, giving me a safe place to land.
I corkscrewed into my chair, ignoring my spasms as if everyone’s chin was supposed to be pinned to their shoulder, and pointed her toward the empty seat next to Ethan Bonner. He was sitting upright, eyes pinched with detached clinical concentration, like a scientist watching lab rats, making me wonder if he knew about my disorder and whether he had orchestrated this moment and why he would want to make me shake.
I glanced at Lucy, her red-faced glare at Bonner pinning it on him. I wasn’t so certain. Some things are just going to happen no matter what you do. And, I had to admit that I wasn’t shaking only because I was taken off guard. Uncomfortable or not, I was glad to see Kate.
“So, down to business,” Bonner said, signaling our server. “The omelets are terrific, and the coffee is passable. What’s everyone going to have?”
Bonner’s effort at forced normalcy worked for me. I didn’t have answers to the questions rattling around in my head and wasn’t certain I’d trust the ones he would give me.
“Veggie,” I told the server. “And toss in some bacon.”
I looked at Lucy, her face finding its normal hue even as her eyes widened at me. I nodded, telling her that she was on deck and to let it go. Everyone ordered, and everyone breathed. I led us in idle chit-chat about Kate’s son and my dogs, her neuromarketing firm, and my gig with Simon and Lucy until our food came, keeping it up while we ate, using the time to restore my equilibrium and get used to being with her again.
I thought back to the Janice Graham case, trying to remember whether she’d been in the courtroom at the defense table, deciding she hadn’t, guessing that she’d nonetheless been the unseen source of Bonner’s magic, wondering what debt she owed him that she was paying off at breakfast and whether she could pick Jimmy Martin’s lock and find out what happened to his kids.
Bonner looked at me and brought the conversation back to his client. “Kate’s going from here to the Farm to talk to Jimmy. I’d appreciate it if you’d go with her.”
“I assume you mean both of us,” Lucy said.
“No,” he said, taking a sip of coffee and smiling an apology to Lucy. “I mean Jack.”
“Bullshit!” she said, coming halfway out of her chair. “This is my case!”
Bonner was smooth, treating the question of whether we had agreed to work together as settled. Lucy’s reaction to his suggestion was as predictable as mine was to Kate’s presence, their argument irrelevant unless we were all partners.
“Three people are too many,” he said. “Jimmy will think you’re ganging up on him, and he’ll clam up even more.”
Lucy had interrogated enough witnesses to know that Bonner was right. She glanced at Kate. They had been close before Kate moved to San Diego. They’d kept in touch, Lucy telling me that Kate was doing fine and had stopped asking about me. Kate nodded at her, and Lucy sat back in her chair, arms folded over her chest, narrowing her eyes at me, not surrendering and demanding I do something.
“We can’t agree to anything until we talk to our client,” I said. “Peggy gives us the okay, we can decide who does what.”
“Kate is only here for a couple of days. You take too long and your client will be the big loser.”
“What’s your schedule?” I asked Kate.
She sighed. “It’s up in the air. There are some things happening at home. I may have to go back sooner than I’d like. Maybe tomorrow.”
I studied her, looking for a downturn in her mouth, a break in eye contact, or a lift in her lip that would tell me what she was thinking and feeling. She called these involuntary twitches micro facial expressions because they lasted a fraction of a second, too short-lived to be recognized and translated by someone not trained in her dark art. I didn’t see any of that. Instead I saw a wistful look in her eyes and a hopeful smile, maybe because that’s what I wanted to see.
“Then, I’ll tell you what,” I said to Bonner. “Kate joins our team for now. She and I go see Jimmy. Whatever we get stays with us until we have a chance to talk with Peggy. If she signs on, we’ll share and share alike. If she says no, Kate can stick with us or go home.”
Bonner put me back under the microscope. We both knew that Kate didn’t need me or anyone else with her when she talked with Jimmy Martin. He wanted something else, something he needed us for, and it wasn’t chasing down leads.
“One condition,” he said. “After you’re done at the farm, Kate interviews Peggy Martin and tells you and me what she thinks. If we don’t have a deal, Kate keeps working for me and you guys are on your own.”
There it was. Bonner didn’t think Kate or anyone else could get anything out of Jimmy Martin, so he didn’t care who talked to him. Peggy Martin was a different story. She wore her emotions on both sleeves. Kate would have no trouble reading her. If Peggy wasn’t being straight with us, I needed to know. I knew one other thing with equal certainty. Never underestimate Kate Scranton. Bonner had done that, his deal now worth more to me than it was to him.
“You know,” Kate said, “this isn’t the third grade. We aren’t on the playground, and Lucy and I aren’t waiting with bated breath to see which team we get to be on. It sounds like Peggy hired Lucy, not you, Jack. And I’m here because Ethan called in a favor, but the favor didn’t include being used as a bargaining chip.”
She said it with a steel smile, the knife going in deep enough to make her point without injuring any nerves. Bonner looked at me and shrugged, conceding the moment.
“Kate,” I said, “are you okay with Bonner’s deal?”
“Only if Lucy is okay with it.”
“Lucy,” I said, “let me go with Kate. This could be our best crack at Jimmy Martin.”
“What am I supposed to do? Stay here and order another cup of coffee?”
“You’ve got the closest relationship with Peggy, and you know that Kate can help us find Evan and Cara. Talk to her and convince her that this is the right thing to do. Besides, we both know Bonner is right. Jimmy will feel like we’re ganging up on him if all three of us show up for the interview.”
She thought for a minute, turning her glare back to Bonner. “Okay, but it’s not Kate I’m worried about.”
Bonner took her shot with a smile. “I wouldn’t be worried about Kate either if I were you.”
Chapter Twenty-two
“Why do they call it the Farm?” Kate asked.
We were eastbound on Blue Parkway in her rented Chevy Malibu approaching LC’s Bar-B-Q.
“Turn here,” I told her, pointing to a street called Sni-A-Bar that fed onto Blue Parkway, one side of the triangle framing LC’s. “Before it was the municipal jail it was a farm, a two thousand–acre hog farm. The city bought it, sold the hogs, and built the jail. It opened in 1972. There are two hundred acres inside the fence. Now the city is talking about shutting it down to save money and moving the inmates to the county jail.”
“Ethan told me that Jimmy should be in the county jail but they didn’t have room for him.”
“That’s today. Long term, the city says it’ll be cheaper to pay the county to house their inmates than to keep the jail open. The county wants the money and is talking about building a new jail.”
“Which is less lousy, the Farm or the county jail?”
“Security isn’t as tight on the Farm. There are two dormitories, one for women and one for men. Unless they put you in an isolation cell for protection or discipline, you do your time on an open floor, like an old hospital ward with rows of beds, on
ly the beds are made of steel and the mattresses are thin enough you can use them to floss your teeth.”
“No stars from Zagat?”
“Not when the majority of inmates have some kind of mental illness and even more of them have drug and alcohol problems. Plus, most of them are homeless, which means they’re happy to have a roof over their heads and that they aren’t likely to be violent. The food sucks, but the body odor quotient makes you forget how bad the food smells.”
“Can’t wait. What was Jimmy like when you and Lucy saw him?”
“Like a guy who spent all day practicing his poker face. Lucy asked the questions, but she didn’t get any answers.”
“What did he say? What was he like?”
“He didn’t say much. Just listened but acted like he didn’t hear a word she said. Only time he showed any reaction was when Lucy asked him why he’d make his wife suffer, not telling her what happened to their kids.”
“What did he say?”
“Said, ‘Ask the bitch.’ Kind of smiled when he said it.”
“Charming. Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Ask the bitch?”
I laughed. “Peggy doesn’t strike me like that, though you never know what someone’s really like until you’re married to them. She says he’s doing it out of spite. Says he’s a mean prick. Says he accused her of cheating on him and smacked her around. She got a restraining order against him a month before he was arrested. He couldn’t see the kids except with a court-appointed social worker.”
“What do you know about the kids?”
“Evan is six, and Cara is eight. They look like their mother.”
“That’s it? That’s all you know?”
“They’re little kids, they’re missing, and good things don’t happen to little kids when they go missing. That’s all I need to know.”
“Well, it’s not all I need to know.”
She followed Sni-A-Bar, turning onto Ozark Road, continuing until we came to the entrance to the Farm. A two-story chain-link fence topped with razor wire and curved inward like a baseball backstop surrounded the complex of one-story buildings.
